Central Intelligence Agency

Central Intelligence Agency

n.

the agency of the federal government concerned with intelligence gathering and other activities involving national security

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➡ CIA.

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▪ United States government

Introduction

  principal foreign intelligence and counterintelligence agency of the U.S. (United States) government. Formally created in 1947, the CIA grew out of the World War II Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Previous U.S. intelligence and counterintelligence efforts had been conducted by the military and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and suffered from duplication, competition, and lack of coordination, problems that continued, to some degree, into the 21st century.

The emergence of the CIA

      The United States was the last of the major powers to establish a civilian intelligence agency responsible for the collection of secret information for policy makers. Indeed, prior to 1942 the country lacked any civilian intelligence agency. Information was collected in an unsystematic way by the Office of Naval Intelligence, by U.S. Army intelligence, and by the FBI. The information gathered was rarely shared with other government agencies and was sometimes not even provided to senior policy makers. For example, because of rivalries between army and navy intelligence offices, which did not want to jeopardize the “security” of their information, President Franklin D. Roosevelt (Roosevelt, Franklin D.) was not given sensitive information about Japan in the months before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor (Pearl Harbor attack) in December 1941.

      In June 1942 Roosevelt created the OSS to bring together the fragmented and uncoordinated strands of U.S. foreign intelligence gathering in a single organization. A similar office for this purpose, the Office of the Coordinator of Information, created in July 1941, had floundered as the result of hostile pressure from the State Department, the military intelligence services, and the FBI. William J. (“Wild Bill”) Donovan (Donovan, William J), who had spurred Roosevelt into creating an information agency, became head of the OSS upon its founding and was largely responsible for building the organization and for improving its ability to perform economic and political intelligence analysis for senior policy makers. (Roosevelt described Donovan as a man who had 100 new ideas a day, of which 95 were terrible—though he added that few men had 5 good ideas in their lifetimes. Donovan supported the use of exotic poisons against enemy targets and once proposed the use of bats to deliver incendiary weapons against Japan.)

      During World War II the OSS, with a staff of approximately 12,000, collected and analyzed information on areas of the world in which U.S. military forces were operating. It used agents inside Nazi-occupied Europe, including Berlin; carried out counterpropaganda and disinformation activities; produced analytical reports for policy makers; and staged special operations (e.g., sabotage and demolition) behind enemy lines to support guerrillas and resistance fighters. Before the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944, more than 500 OSS agents were working inside occupied France. Among reports commissioned from the OSS were assessments of German industry and war-making capability and a psychological profile of German dictator Adolf Hitler that concluded that he would likely commit suicide should Germany be defeated. Under Donovan's capable, if unorthodox, direction, the OSS was remarkably effective, despite the initial inexperience of most of its personnel. Its successes notwithstanding, the OSS was dismantled at the conclusion of the war.

      In 1946 President Harry S. Truman (Truman, Harry S.), recognizing the need for a coordinated postwar intelligence establishment, created by executive order a Central Intelligence Group and a National Intelligence Authority, both of which recruited key former members of the OSS. As in the days of the OSS, there were problems of distrust and rivalry between the new civilian agencies and the military intelligence services and the FBI.

      In 1947 Congress passed the National Security Act, which created the National Security Council (NSC) and, under its direction, the CIA. Given extensive power to conduct foreign intelligence operations, the CIA was charged with advising the NSC on intelligence matters, correlating and evaluating the intelligence activities of other government agencies, and carrying out other intelligence activities as the NSC might require. Although it did not end rivalries with the military services and the FBI, the law established the CIA as the country's preeminent intelligence service. The agency was popularly thought of as the U.S. counterpart of the Soviet KGB (which was dissolved in 1991), though, unlike the KGB, the CIA was forbidden by law (the National Security Act) from conducting intelligence and counterintelligence operations on domestic soil. In contrast, the majority of the KGB's operations took place within the Soviet Union and against Soviet citizens.

Organization and responsibilities

 The CIA is headed by a director and deputy director, only one of whom may be a military officer. The director of central intelligence (DCI) is responsible for managing all U.S. intelligence-gathering activities. DCIs have been drawn from various fields, including not only intelligence but also the military, politics, and business. The DCI serves as the chief intelligence adviser to the president (presidency of the United States of America) and is often his close confidant. Some intelligence directors have played critical roles in shaping U.S. foreign policy—e.g., Allen W. Dulles (Dulles, Allen W.) during the Dwight D. Eisenhower (Eisenhower, Dwight D.) administration (1953–61) and William Casey (Casey, William J.) during the Ronald Reagan (Reagan, Ronald W.) administration (1981–89)—though others, particularly during the administration of Bill Clinton (Clinton, Bill) (1993–2001), have been less important in this respect.

      The CIA is organized into four major directorates. The Intelligence Directorate analyzes intelligence gathered by overt means from sources such as the news media and by covert means from agents in the field, satellite photography, and the interception of telephone and other forms of communication. These analyses attempt to incorporate intelligence from all possible sources. During the Cold War most of this work was focused on the military and the military-industrial complex of the Soviet Union.

      The Directorate of Operations is responsible for the clandestine collection of intelligence (i.e., espionage) and special covert operations. Clandestine activities are carried out under various covers, including the diplomatic cloak used by virtually every intelligence service, as well as corporations and other “front” companies that the CIA creates or acquires. Despite the elaborate nature of some covert operations, these activities represent only a small fraction of the CIA's overall budget.

      The Directorate of Science and Technology is responsible for keeping the agency abreast of scientific and technological advances, for carrying out technical operations (e.g., coordinating intelligence from reconnaissance satellites), and for supervising the monitoring of foreign media. During the Cold War, material gathered from aerial reconnaissance produced detailed information on issues as varied as the Soviet grain crop and the development of Soviet ballistic missiles. Information obtained through these satellites was critical to the arms-control (arms control) process; indeed, agreements reached during the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) in the 1970s specifically mentioned the use of satellites to monitor the development of weapons. The Directorate of Science and Technology has been instrumental in designing spy (espionage) satellites and in intercepting the communications of other countries.

      The Directorate of Administration is responsible for the CIA's finances and personnel matters. It also contains the Office of Security, which is responsible for the security of personnel, facilities, and information as well as for uncovering spies within the CIA.

Activities

      The publication of post-Cold War memoirs by former agents and the release of declassified documents by the United States and Russia have provided a fairly complete account of the CIA's activities, including both its successes and its failures. CIA data collection and analysis was important for arms-control negotiations with the Soviet Union (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) throughout the Cold War and for determining U.S. strategy during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, when President John F. Kennedy (Kennedy, John F.) relied on information gathered by the CIA through Soviet double agent Colonel Oleg Penkovsky (Penkovsky, Oleg Vladimirovich). During the 1970s and '80s, CIA agents in the Soviet military and the KGB provided information on the Soviet military-industrial complex. During the Cold War, CIA technical operations included the bugging of the Soviet military's major communications line in East Germany and the development of reconnaissance aircraft such as the U-2 and spy satellites capable of photographing targets as small as a rocket silo. Aerial reconnaissance—first by plane and then by satellite—provided early warning of the deployment of Soviet missiles in Cuba and the development of new missiles in the Soviet Union.

      Among the Directorate of Operations' covert actions were the ouster of the premier of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddeq (Mosaddeq, Mohammad), and the restoration of the shah (shāh) in 1953; the overthrow by military coup of the democratically elected leftist government of Guatemala in the following year; the organization of a “secret army” of Miao (Hmong) tribesmen to monitor the Ho Chi Minh Trail during the Vietnam War; the financial support of military officers plotting against the government of Chilean president Salvador Allende (Allende, Salvador) before the military coup there in 1973; and, in the 1980s, the arming and training of mujahideen guerrillas fighting the Soviet-backed government and the Soviet military in the Afghan War and the organizing, arming, and training of the Nicaraguan Contras fighting to overthrow that country's Sandinista government. (In the early 1960s the CIA briefly considered using illegal drugs to control foreign agents.)

      Although many covert actions were highly successful, some were embarrassing failures, such as the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba by CIA-sponsored Cuban émigrés in 1961 and the faulty intelligence gathering during the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999 that led to the destruction of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. The CIA also was unsuccessful in its multiple attempts to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro (Castro, Fidel) in the 1960s through agents recruited within the Cuban government as well as through contacts with the Mafia in the United States. Plots to kill or embarrass Castro included poisoning his cigars, lacing his cigars with a hallucinogen, providing him with exploding cigars, poisoning his wet suit (Castro was an underwater enthusiast), and administering drugs that would cause his beard and eyebrows to fall out.

      After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the CIA changed both its institutional structure and its mission. Whereas more than half its resources before 1990 had been devoted to activities aimed at the Soviet Union, in the post-Cold War era it increasingly targeted nonstate actors such as terrorists and international criminal organizations. It also made significant efforts to collect and analyze information about the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Spy satellites that had been used exclusively for military purposes were sometimes used for other tasks, such as collecting evidence of ecological disasters and human rights abuses.

      During the 1990s the CIA supported U.S. military operations in the Balkans and the Middle East. It also sometimes served as a mediator between the Palestinian Authority and the government of Israel. Following the destruction by terrorists of the World Trade Center in New York City and part of the Pentagon near Washington, D.C., on September 11, 2001 (see September 11 attacks), CIA paramilitary officers in Afghanistan aided the U.S. attack on that country by collecting information and identifying military targets.

Criticism and assessment

      The CIA has been criticized for conducting covert actions that some consider immoral or illegal under international law, for maintaining close ties to human rights abusers and other criminals, and for failing to safeguard its own operations. In the early days of the Cold War, the CIA and the U.S. military intelligence services smuggled former Nazi (Nazi Party) intelligence officers out of Europe, and the agency worked with several former Nazis to conduct intelligence operations in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. In the 1980s and '90s, in an effort to infiltrate foreign terrorist organizations, the CIA recruited foreign officials, particularly in Latin America, who had participated in the murder of civilians. A congressional inquiry led by Senator Robert Torricelli in the mid-1990s eventually resulted in the demotion or forced resignation of a number of CIA personnel. At about the same time, the agency was embarrassed by a series of counterintelligence scandals that included revelations that one of its intelligence officers, Aldrich Ames (Ames, Aldrich), had spied for the Soviet and Russian intelligence services for nine years; at least 10 CIA operatives in the Soviet Union had been executed on the basis of information he provided.

      The CIA often has been portrayed by its critics as an agency run amok that implements covert operations without the approval of the executive branch of the U.S. government. Contrary to this assertion, however, all covert operations must be officially sanctioned by the executive branch. Once approved by the National Security Council, plans for covert action are presented to the Senate and House committees that oversee CIA operations.

 After the terrorist (terrorism) attacks of September 2001, the CIA, along with the FBI, was criticized for failing to penetrate terrorist groups that pose a threat to the United States and for failing to share information on such groups. The budget for intelligence activities was dramatically increased, and the CIA was given extensive new powers to conduct intelligence and paramilitary operations against terrorists. In 2005 a presidential committee examining intelligence failures released a report that criticized the CIA for its inaccurate assessments of Ṣaddām Ḥussein's possession of weapons of mass destruction (weapon of mass destruction) in the lead-up to the Iraq War. Policy makers also began to debate whether the executive order that prohibited the CIA from carrying out assassinations (signed in 1976 by President Gerald Ford) should be reversed.

      The CIA faces far greater public scrutiny than the intelligence services of most other Western democracies. Its failures are trumpeted in the press, discussed on the floor of Congress, and frequently leaked to the media by ambitious policy makers. Apart from these problems, there exists a natural tension between the transparency and accountability essential to a democracy and the secrecy necessary for effective intelligence gathering. During the 1990s the CIA attempted to improve its public image by becoming more open about its activities. CIA “officers in residence” were assigned to several universities, unclassified intelligence estimates were made public, and the agency rapidly declassified material on subjects ranging from unidentified flying objects (UFOs) to Russian missile production.

Robert W. Pringle

Additional Reading

The CIA's role is discussed in Jeffrey T. Richelson, The U.S. Intelligence Community, 5th ed. (2008). A critical history of the CIA is provided in Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (2007). An excellent account of the Office of Strategic Services is Joseph E. Persico, Roosevelt's Secret War: FDR and World War II Espionage (2001). Christopher Andrew, For the President's Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush (1995), provides a good overview of U.S. intelligence. Robert M. Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider's Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (1993, reissued in 1996), is an insider's account by a former CIA director. The covert operations of the CIA have been discussed in the works of many former operations officers, including Antonio Mendez, The Master of Disguise: My Secret Life in the CIA (1999); William J. Daugherty, In the Shadow of the Ayatollah (2001); and David Atlee Phillips, The Night Watch (1977). The struggle between the CIA and the KGB is detailed in David E. Murphy, Sergei A. Kondrashev, and George Bailey, Battleground Berlin: CIA vs. KGB in the Cold War (1997, reissued 1999); and Milt Bearden and James Risen, The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the CIA's Final Showdown with the KGB (2003).An excellent study of the first leaders of the Directorate of Operations is Evan Thomas, The Very Best Men: Four Who Dared (1995). The origins of the CIA and its leadership are also the subject of Amy B. Zegart, Flawed by Design: The Evolution of the CIA, JCS, and NSC (1999); David R. Rudgers, Creating the Secret State: The Origins of the Central Intelligence Agency, 1943–1947 (2000); and Burton Hersh, The Old Boys: The American Elite and the Origins of the CIA (1992, reissued 2002). The human cost of CIA operations is explored in Ted Gup, The Book of Honor: Covert Lives and Classified Deaths at the CIA (2000).Monographs published by the Central Intelligence Agency Center for the Study of Intelligence include The CIA and the U-2 Program, 1954–1974 (1998); Assessing the Soviet Threat: The Early Cold War Years (1997); and At Cold War's End: US Intelligence on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, 1989–1991 (1999). Also helpful is Central Intelligence Agency, A Consumer's Guide to Intelligence (2000).Robert W. Pringle

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